The Gods of Amyrantha (38 page)

'By the time this is done, Ricard Li, you'll be sending me
copies
of your own intelligence reports, to save me the trouble of spying on you myself, you'll owe me so many favours.'

The older man smiled. 'You'll do it then?'

Declan nodded, regretting the action for much more than just the pain it caused in his head. 'I'll do it.'

'There!' Ricard said to the princess. 'I told you I'd find a way out of this for you, your highness. It's all settled. You're going to Glaeba.'

CHAPTER 37

Declan Hawkes had been right about one thing, Warlock mused, as he let himself into the royal suite, carrying Queen Kylia's breakfast tray. Now he'd proved his credentials as a doting slave to the suzerain, he was never doubted again. Since the death of King Enteny and Queen Inala — where he'd stood by and done nothing to raise the alarm or try to prevent it — he'd been by Kylia's side. Not once had she ever so much as glanced in his direction with an uncertain look, even when discussing the most treasonous of plans with her partner in crime, Jaxyn Aranville.

The immortals were smart enough to insist only Crash serve them in the royal palace. There were no mortal human ears around Jaxyn or Diala to overhear their plotting, no human eyes to witness their scheming, and no human hearts to be overcome by guilt or conscience. The Crasii were bred to be obedient to their masters and Warlock had proved he was that.

The Tide Lords didn't fear betrayal by their slaves because the Crasii were incapable of it.

This morning was proving to be a perfect example of how things were in the palace these days. Mathu was long gone, up at the crack of dawn to deal with the numerous demands on him now he was the uncrowned King of Glaeba, so Kylia was taking her breakfast in bed, where she'd been joined by Jaxyn Aranville.

As far as Warlock could tell, the two immortals weren't sleeping together. He suspected this was

because Diala didn't entirely trust Jaxyn — a wise precaution — or perhaps the reverse was true. Given what the Immortal Prince had told Warlock and the Duchess of Lebec about this woman — known among even her own kind as the Minion Maker — not trusting her probably wasn't a bad idea.

Whatever the case, the soon-to-be Queen of Glaeba was sitting in bed, propped up by a mountain of pillows, while Jaxyn sat on the window seat chatting to her. Warlock placed the tray on her lap with a polite bow.

'Will there be anything else, your majesty?'

He'd stopped calling her 'highness' the moment they'd found her downstream from the ruined dock, collapsed on the shores of the Lower Oran, about an hour after the royal barge was smashed against the wharf. Although she was sobbing and clearly distressed, Warlock knew it was an act. He thought she must have jumped clear when the boat first slammed into the pylons. Diala was immortal, so there was no danger of her drowning. She might, however, have had some trouble explaining away broken bones that healed within an hour or cuts that stopped bleeding and sealed themselves while you watched.

'Just wait over there until I'm finished,' she said, waving a hand in the general direction of the other side of the room. 'You can take the tray back to the kitchens when I'm done.'

It was a habit of Diala's to make her slaves wait around while she ate. Even more humiliating was her suggestion they might like to eat the scraps when she was done, something Warlock had been forced to swallow his pride to do, on several occasions.

'As you wish, your majesty.'

Diala ignored him after that, as Warlock retreated across the room to stand in the corner. Diala's attention was fixed on Jaxyn and the conversation he'd interrupted with his arrival. 'Mathu got a message last

night. Stellan Desean is on his way home from Torlenia for the funeral.'

'That's hardly news. He's the king's cousin.'

'Aren't you worried?'

Jaxyn shrugged, unconcerned. 'It was a freak accident caused by an unseasonable storm. He won't suspect anything.'

'I'm not suggesting he'll think Enteny and Inala's death is anything else,' Kylia said, biting into her toast. 'But with Enteny dead, doesn't that make him heir to the throne, now?'

'I hadn't thought of that.' Jaxyn frowned, rubbing his chin. 'Don't suppose
you
feel like getting pregnant in the next week, do you? Give young Mathu the heir he craves — not to mention so desperately needs?'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

He smiled. 'Just a thought. We could kill Stellan,
1
suppose.'

Diala shook her head. 'Too many deaths too soon and people will start to talk. The Tide's not up far enough for us to take this country on our own. Besides, killing him won't solve the problem. Arkady is already pregnant, remember? She carries the Desean heir, so if Stellan dies, his son will be next in line for the throne after Mathu and we're no better off than we are now.'

'So? We kill them both.'

'You can't. Arkady's staying in Torlenia. Stellan's on his way back alone. I imagine he doesn't want to risk her travelling in her condition.'

Jaxyn was silent for a moment, pursing his lips. 'The problem then, is not killing the Desean line, but discrediting it.'

'How are you going to do that?'

He looked at her, shaking his head. 'Tides, Diala, you lived in the Lebec Palace with us. You saw what was going on. You're not that naive, surely?'

Warlock wondered what they were talking about. They both seemed to know what it would take to

bring down the Duke of Lebec, but — rather inconveniently — didn't feel the need to explain it for the benefit of the spy standing in the corner of the room. Warlock hadn't known about the Duchess being pregnant, either. He was glad to hear it, certain she must be delighted by the news.

Diala swallowed another mouthful of toast and washed it down with a sip of tea before she answered Jaxyn. 'If you tell Mathu about Stellan's sexual proclivities, you'll have to admit your own involvement with him. What's the point of bringing Stellan Desean down, if you go crashing down with him?'

'But I was his innocent victim,' he said, smiling in a mariner that made Warlock's blood run cold. 'He's so much older than me, after all. And he's a duke. How could I refuse him? He forced himself on me. Over and over and over. It was ... terrible.'

Diala laughed. 'Tides, Jaxyn, you'd better look a little more put out than that, if you're planning to convince anybody you were being taken by force. It does pose an interesting question, though.'

'What question?'

'Well, with dear old Uncle Stellan playing for the other team, 1 wonder how Arkady got pregnant?'

Reeling a little from this startling news about the Duke of Lebec, Warlock expected Jaxyn to reply with something flippant, but his reaction was quite the opposite. The Tide Lord closed his eyes for a moment and then began to swear in a language Warlock had never heard before. He cursed for a full minute, Diala looking on curiously, before he finally stood up and began pacing, his anger a palpable force Warlock could feel from the other side of the room.

'Tides, I should've guessed,' Jaxyn eventually said in Glaeban.

'Guessed what?' Diala asked, anxious to discover — as Warlock was — what had prompted his unexpected outburst.

'Who fathered a child on her.' 'It wasn't
you,
was it?'

He glared at her. 'Think about it, Diala. She was interrogating Cayal every day at the prison and then she conveniently disappeared into the mountains with him for a week.'

Warlock's heart sank at Jaxyn's words, certain he had the right of it. He'd seen the way Arkady and Cayal reacted to each other. Their eventual mating wasn't only likely, it was probably inevitable.

Without the advantage of Warlock's first-hand knowledge of their relationship, however, Diala scoffed at the very idea. 'You think
Cayal
is the father of her child? How do you figure that? When you got back from your heroic little rescue mission, you told me you saw no sign of any affection between them. You said Cayal couldn't have cared less that you'd come for Arkady.'

'I'd forgotten who I was dealing with,' Jaxyn said. 'The man who'll walk away from any soul on Amyrantha — once they're of no further use to him — and the Queen of the Liars herself. Tides, Arkady has faked being the love of Stellan's life for the better part of seven years. She wouldn't even break into a sweat pretending there was nothing going on between her and Cayal.'

Diala seemed more amused than worried by the idea. 'It makes no difference, Jaxyn. If you expose Stellan for what he is, the scandal will ruin his whole house and Mathu will have no choice but to disinherit him, along with any child Arkady might be carrying, regardless of who fathered the brat.'

'I'll bet he was laughing at me the whole time.'

Diala rolled her eyes. 'Oh,
please,
can we not get all tied up in knots over Cayal and what he may or may not have been thinking three months ago? I thought you'd be long past caring what he did, anyway.'

'I would be,' Jaxyn said. 'If only he'd stop doing it around me.'

'Doing
what?'
Diala asked. 'He's crazy, Jaxyn. Has been for a thousand years or more. He wants to die, for pity's sake, and he seems to have chosen making you dedicate your life to being rid of him as his method of achieving it.'

'He's up to something.'

'He's always up to something. We're all up to something.' She leaned back against the pillows with a sigh. 'It's what we do, Jaxyn.'

Diala's reassurances did little to soothe the agitated immortal. 'This is Glaeba. Cayal's traditional stomping ground. If he was planning to make a comeback with the Tide returning ...'

Diala smiled, picked up the teacup. 'Ah, yes, I can see now, how he must have been sitting there in Lebec Prison planning to take over the whole country from his cell ... still, he is
crazy,
I suppose.'

Jaxyn was not amused. 'Don't mock me, Diala. You underestimate Cayal. You always have.'

'And you're jealous of him,' she said. 'Although I've never really understood why.'

To Warlock's surprise, Jaxyn didn't even try to deny Diala's accusation. 'It's because he always gets what he wants.'

'I don't know,' Diala said with a shrug. 'He' doesn't seem to be having too much luck with this "goodbye cruel world" campaign of his, so far, does he?'

Jaxyn turned on her. 'Tides, how can you be so dense? Suppose Cayal
does
eventually find a way to die?'

'Then we'll be well rid of him.'

'Then we'll no longer be immortal,' he pointed out, impatient with her lack of comprehension. 'If one of us can die, Diala, we
all
can. Think about that.'

Clearly, Diala hadn't thought what Cayal's successful suicide might mean to the rest of them, but

even now, she seemed far less concerned than her companion. 'It's all hypothetical, Jaxyn. He's been trying to kill himself for more than a thousand years and he hasn't succeeded yet. I'll worry about no longer being immortal when he does.'

Jaxyn stared at her for a moment and then threw up his hands, muttered a curse under his breath and headed for the door.

'Where are you going?'

'To see Mathu. If I'm going to expose Stellan Desean as deviant, I'll need to do it before he gets here.'

Diala smiled. 'Well, try not to look
too
thrilled while you're describing all the gory and graphic details, Jaxyn. You don't want Mathu thinking you
enjoyed
it.'

Jaxyn stopped and turned to face her, his eyes full of anger. 'Are you
threatening
me?'

Warlock thought that a rather silly question. There was an implied threat in her words that even
he
got.

'I'm just saying ... you need to be careful, that's

all.'

The Tide Lord shook his head, smiling dangerously. 'Diala, my precious, If you so much as
hint
to Mathu that I was a willing participant in Stellan Desean's perversions, I will order every male Crasii in the palace to swear you've been having your way with them on a daily basis, starting with your tame hound, Cecil, over there in the corner. If you think our young king won't like what
I've
been up to, imagine what his reaction will be to that.'

Diala's smug expression faded. She glanced at Warlock. 'Cecil, I am your mistress. You were given to me. You are not to follow the orders of Lord Jaxyn, is that clear?'

'To serve you is the reason I breathe, my lady,' he replied, wishing they would leave him out of it.

'Cecil, come to heel!' Jaxyn countered, which left Warlock in an untenable position. He was a Scard, and

not naturally inclined to do anything these monsters ordered him to do. Worse, he had no idea how a real Crasii would react to two such conflicting orders from those he was compelled to obey. He hesitated, knowing his indecision could be fatal, and then decided to do as Jaxyn commanded.

He crossed the room to where Jaxyn waited, and then bowed. 'My lord?'

Jaxyn gave Diala a triumphant look. 'See? They'll do whatever
I
ask.'